Refined Carbs: A Two-Faced Frenemy. The Truth About Low-Fat Foods and Refined Flour Products

We hear about the CARB MONSTER all the time: low-carb, no-carb, good carb, bad carb, anything but carbs!!!

What Americans need is not to cut carbs completely (they are absolutely necessary for bodily function and energy) but to eat a NO-SIMPLE-CARB diet. Indeed, refined carbohydrates are at the very crux of the obesity epidemic in America.

FYI: Results from the 2005-2006 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) indicate that an estimated 32.7 percent of U.S. adults 20 years and older are overweight, 34.3 percent are obese. If that isn't enough to show you what's at stake: 1 in 7 pre-school-aged children in low-income neighborhoods is obese. (Read more here: http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/childhood/index.html)

What are refined carbs?

Refined carbohydrates include, but are not limited to the following:
pretzels, cookies, cakes, muffins, bagels, Goldfish, most crackers, potato chips, Doritos, baked chips, cereals like Cheerios, corn flakes, Total, Raisin Bran, Special K, even many Whole Foods brand cereals, and all the pre-sweetened ones like Lucky Charms and Fruity Pebbles that are marketed to children, granola bars like Nutri-Grain, Special K, Nature Valley, white rice, all breads that have "refined white flour" or even "refined wheat flour" as the first ingredient, white pasta or pasta that uses semolina flour (even whole wheat semolina--your body treats it the same as white semolina).

What happens in your body when you eat them?

Let's take a bagel breakfast at 8AM in the morning for example (even without cream cheese...let's say with just a little jelly even). After you chew and swallow each bite, the food goes down into the small ad large intestine, where it digests. Because the flour in a bagel is so refined, (all the fiber has been taken from the grain,) your body breaks down the glucose molecules for energy faster than James Bond in an Aston Martin. This causes our body's blood sugar, our glucose levels to spike just as fast. Because the glucose rush is so rapid, the body considers itself to be in a state of emergency. Seretonin levels soar too high too quickly and the hormone insulin is brought in like a firefighter to put out the fire, or bring the glucose level back to homeostasis (which your body is always working, night and day, to achieve biologically). After the insulin brings your glucose down, your body experiences a crash. The crash manifests in the following way: sudden hunger, headache, irritability...usually at 10 AM...and then at 4 PM..."the frappaccino hour" especially, if you have again eaten any of these refined carbs at lunch, or a salad and a diet coke and pretzels for example...

Why are refined carbs a two-faced frenemy?

Here's where the double whammy comes in. Since our American society has grown up on a refined carb diet, eating bagels, crackers, cakes, pretzels, etc. since childhood, what happens is the body gets too accustomed to its job of producing insulin to bring sky-rocket levels of glucose down that it becomes hypoglycemic, or worse, is vulnerable to developing Type 2 diabetes. The body looks to more refined carbs to keep up the energy because it knows it serves a purpose, but it only creates more of the same problem...overfilled sugar cells...which, when full, the extra glucose, gets stored as fat. So, all these low-fat foods we have been told to eat actually can contribute to weight gain if eaten repeatedly, without other healthy foods in the diet like fruit, veggies, whole grains, and plant protein.

Why exercise alone can not burn off these refined carb calories in many cases:

After repeated sugar crashing, the body has no choice but to adapt to the sugar rollercoaster. But, because the body is so busy producing insulin all the time, it stops being able to produce glucagon, which is the hormone that takes fat out of storage to be burned. So, not only are people gaining weight, but they are losing the ability to burn fat even when they try to exercise and lose weight.

The take home message:

I challenge you to take a good look at the carbs you eat on a daily basis and see if you can't come up with healthy replacements for these supposed "diet foods."

Tomorrow, I will elaborate on the alternative to a simple carb diet. Remember in high school that true-blue friend you ditched for the popular kids' party that sucked anyway??? Welcome back to complex carbs everyone!